Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change
Douglas Thomas
USC, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
A World of Constant Change
• Why do our classrooms in the 21st century look like they did in the 19th century?
• Resisting, Managing, Adapting and Embracing Change
• Change is endemic
The Problem of Transfer
• Efficiency of knowledge transfer
• Explicit vs. Tacit• Content vs. Context• The differences between
teaching and learning
Harry Potter and the New Culture of Learning
• 4500 pages over 10 years• 150,000 stories written on
one fan site alone• > 1,500 stories are
100,000 words or longer
Innovation and Creativity
• What are the differences?• Why do they matter?• From what to where and
from where to how…• The power of “what if?”
and world building
Communities and Collectives
• Institution and agency• Community and the
problem of scale• Learning in the collective• Robust peer-to-peer
learning amplified by the power of the collective
A New Culture of Learning
• Inquiry• Questions• Two cultures• Bounded learning
environments• Questing disposition
Learning Around the Game
• 14 million players• Processing 15,000 pieces
of information daily• Knowledge economies• 360 degree peer
evaluations• Organic learning
structures
Thanks!
• Special thanks to John Seely Brown and the Annenberg Innovation Lab
• [email protected]• http://www.douglasthomas.com
